The Worst Man in the World  (English, Paperback, Richardson Frank)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE POET AND THE PLEASURE-SEEKER Two days later, dejected and irritable, Sir Rupert flung himself into an arm-chair in the hall of Marra- dyne Castle. The fifteen miles' drive from Kingol- drum in bracing air, the return to the home of his fathers, had not wiped away the shock of his London experiences. Even the kiss of Lady Marradyne did not restore his spirits or free him from his obsession of anger. " What's wrong with my Rupie lad ? " asked Maggie, an acidulated woman, one of Nature's confirmed spinsters, whom Sir Rupert, out of sheer laziness and good nature, had converted into a wife. For years after the death of the first Lady Marradyne he had devoted himself solely to cattle- breeding. But on entering on the guardianshipof Augustus and Lily, the orphan children of his younger brother Luke, it had seemed fitting that he should take to himself a wife. The only woman of any education in the neighbourhood was his housekeeper, Maggie MacNab, a wholly undesirable person from a matrimonial point of view. Considerably to her surprise and pleasure he had, whilst giving her certain household instructions, ordered her to prepare for marriage in much the same way that he would have ordered her to prepare for a shooting party. In her youth she had taught mathematics in a Girls' College in Peebles, and had developed a face like a proposition of Euclid—all angles. She was a good woman, and fittingly intolerant of the moral failings of others. She called them " goings on," and went for them. Her husband's wedding present to her had been a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles— a gift which she regarded as jewellery. In fact, she almost considered their use a form of overdressing and a snare for the sinful. Yet men resisted the subtle temptation, and in spite of her gol...